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Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

Hello all,
I have a pair of HIDx HID lights on the front of the Jeep that are 6000K color temp ----- although they are just at the beginning stages of blueness, I'd rather that the color be closer to 3600-4300K. For some reason the difference in color temperature between the HIDs and my headlights is annoying.

Would a coat or two of Duplicolor Metalcast Yellow on the inside of the lens give me the desired results or would I find myself with a pair of green lights?

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

Nice looking ride, could do with one of those over here at the moment, RWD, wide summer tyres and snow don't play well together.

Does the product not have any documentation to the bulbs used anywhere? Can you make out the bulbs through the glass, or if not it looks like the glass is easily removed.

With more use the colour is only going to get cooler and more and more blue, true with almost all HID bulbs.

If you can find out the bulb type then you should have some options but unless you want selective (very) yellow (3000K) the lowest HID is around the low 4000s which will be much more halogen-like than what you have.
Also, 6000K HID bulbs are almost always lower output than the 4100K bulbs so I'd be quite surprised if these lights acually have 3200 lumens with 6000K colour temperature, even Philips 6000k have to sacrifice 25% output achieve this colour.

Any sort of coating/colour you add to the glass or reflector is going to reduce output and due to the way HIDs make light (discontinious spectrum, low CRI etc) it may not help much at all.

The other pics you post show your Vision Plus +50 to be very yellow/orange indeed, are these on standard wiring loom or do you have upgraded thicker guage wire harness, this is often overlooked as a way to get more output.

EDIT: Just seen your other post/pics about CANBUS, relays and changing to HELLA 7", looks like you're on the case already!

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

I think if I were going to try experimenting with color shifting on the cheap, I'd head to a theatrical supply house and pick up a few sheets of Roscolux. This is the colored "gel" (as it's called; it's actually acetate or something) used to tint lights for stage and movie productions. There are color-correcting materials designed specifically to shift the CCT of a light source. Spend some time on the right pages of their site, Roscolux and Cinegel and E-color. Don't be scared off by what seem like drastic filtration losses (transmissivity figures); they are counting all light from deep violet through to deep red; much of that is not usable for a vehicle forward-lighting task. I think I'd probably pick up the following somewhat lengthy list of gels to try out and see which one I liked best. Price will probably vary pretty widely, so you may want to narrow down off this list. These materials are very heat-tolerant, so once you find the one you want to stay with, you could put it inside the lens if you can get access. Otherwise you'll have to figure out a workable way to affix it in front of the lens without allowing water in between the gel and the lens.

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

im with you on the color difference. if im playing with two lights on a walk, or if my wife has one and i have another, a blue light mixed with a white or yellow is strangely annoying.

have you considered changing your yellow headlight bulbs to a hid look a like bulb. they're fairly cheap and you can get some bright ones. basically they're white bulbs with blue coloring around them, but it will get your color the same, it will just be a cool color.

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

I'd rather go yellow than super white; I've already ordered an H4 kit and will have some nice Hellas for the headlights. I'm going to start with the yellow duplicolor paint for the HIDs but can't seem to find it locally. Might just drive over to Summit today...

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

Originally Posted by jasonsmaglites

have you considered changing your yellow headlight bulbs to a hid look a like bulb. they're fairly cheap and you can get some bright ones. basically they're white bulbs with blue coloring around them, but it will get your color the same, it will just be a cool color.

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

This is a problem...how, exactly? It's long because they give very detailed info on all their products. You'd rather they gave no info at all? I don't get your complaint.

I don't get your complaint about my surprise and disapproval at the length of the page, and note you're making a straw man argument by suggesting the alternative is to have no information. I hope this helps you to understand that it could be better:

Imagine, if you will, that you're an automotive lighting designer with the job of sorting out the lighting for a new car. You decide that using fewer bulbs will mean greater simplicity and lower cost, and point out to the design owners commissioning your work that doing it this way will make the cars faster and easier to make. Thus, you decree the headlight bulbs will also get used for driving lights, DRLs, parking lights, and front indicators. Sure, it can be done, and at first glance it's simpler. But (legality aside) is it really desirable?

Unlike automotive lighting, there aren't any regulations about how much information can be shoveled into a single web page, but the information would certainly be more user-friendly if the background information was placed on a separate page from the specs. If they can't figure out a cost effective way to make their colour list more manageable, and can't be bothered making a dedicated info page, then so be it. We'll just have to put up with it because they choose to put their would-be design efforts in other directions. I really do think there is quite enough there with just the absorption specs without information cluttering the page about how the gels are made.

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

I don't think we disagree in principle; good design is good and bad design is bad. I don't agree the Rosco site is particularly egregious. It could certainly be better, but it's just as certainly far from unusable. I've seen a lot of sites that are far, far worse designed and much less useful and/or usable.

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

Imagine, if you will, that you're an automotive lighting designer with the job of sorting out the lighting for a new car

Big imagination - they don't exist.

I agree with your complaints about web design, and wish sites that you refer to with a lot of technical information would simply stick to the basic principal of single page reference and then putting everything else in a downloadable PDF format. Classis example is Cutter's web-site, which is tremendously popular with this forum but looks like it was designed in 98'.

Also note that most people ordering Rosco type gels want them for replacing in their PAR cans, and only know the reference number. Technical descriptions for them don't matter. All they care about is the number.

For the OP's sake, if he wants to fix this with filters he'll need either light orange or yellow, #R07 or #R08. Typically the intensity loss with going lower in kelvin temp isn't is as bad as raising kelvin temp, aka trying to get halogen to mimmick HID.

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

Originally Posted by bshanahan14rulz

Just to be clear, the HIDx units don't have user-replaceable burners?

As it turns out, yes, they do.

I finally took them apart yesterday and shot the inside of the lenses with the Duplicolor Metalcast Yellow. It worked as intended and yields a mellow yellow cast to the light output.
It was very very foggy last night and we drove around for a bit; my wife even said, "wow; I can see..."

I'll snap a photo at the next opportunity to show the comparison to my earlier "before" shot.

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

Hilldweller, I know I'm asking for subjective judgement, unless you have the necessary instrumentation handy -- but how much light did it seem you lost when you used the Duplicolor yellow coating?

I'm just thinking: We want HID for efficiency: LOTS of light for little wattage in. So we find a super deal on 4" HID lights, but the darned things are "blue." We pop $5.95 on a can of spray paint, and "adjust" the color output of the lights. But filtering the light means you lost some; we cannot escape the laws of physics.

Did they seem dimmer after the coating? Do feel you're still getting lots more light than with similar sized halogen lights?

Oh, and while I'm asking, what's the beam pattern on those HIDX lights from RDM? Are they long range lights, or offroad area lights?

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

Hilldweller, I know I'm asking for subjective judgement, unless you have the necessary instrumentation handy -- but how much light did it seem you lost when you used the Duplicolor yellow coating?

I'm just thinking: We want HID for efficiency: LOTS of light for little wattage in. So we find a super deal on 4" HID lights, but the darned things are "blue." We pop $5.95 on a can of spray paint, and "adjust" the color output of the lights. But filtering the light means you lost some; we cannot escape the laws of physics.

Did they seem dimmer after the coating? Do feel you're still getting lots more light than with similar sized halogen lights?

The purely unscientific eyeball test guesses a loss of about 15%.
But numbers alone don't due the change any justice. The blueish light was fairly painful to behold when it reflected back off signs (to my eyes, at least). It also rendered the natural landscape an other-worldly pale and washed-out look. There was also a noticeably long amount of time for my eyes to adapt to ambient (from the headlights) light conditions when I shut them off.

After shooting them yellow, the transition to headlights-only is faster and less dramatic. The bounce-back off of signs doesn't make me squint. Bunny rabbits and deer don't look like zombies.
The lights now have a color that's similar to some sodium vapor lights that are on the roads around here.

I have Hella 500's also and these HIDs still put out at least double the light.

Originally Posted by Hamilton Felix

Oh, and while I'm asking, what's the beam pattern on those HIDX lights from RDM? Are they long range lights, or offroad area lights?

Thanks.

I wouldn't call them long-range necessarily, especially the way I've got them mounted.
There aren't too many times that a Jeep with big mud tires is going to be pressed to travel faster than 60 mph anyhow...

I parked my Jeep with the HIDs and Phillips Visionplus (+50) H13 bulbs next to a friend's Jeep with Trucklite LED headlights. Bear in mind that my Jeep was parked up against the right-hand curb in these photos; the other Jeep was left of center.
I'll shoot a picture in the same area with the new color when I have a chance.

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

Hey, thanks! I think I'll pass on the Trucklite LED headlights. That's a weird beam pattern, and it doesn't really change for high beam.

I'm on a shoestring budget these days, but I'll keep looking.

I see there are a number of 4" HID lights out now. The (expensive) Soltek Fuego lights from Baja Designs, the Optilux HID by Hella, these HIDX lights sold by RDM, and I'm not sure if the CSK (now O'Reilly Auto Parts, since the latest buyout) is still being sold. They all look very similar.

Some of these, the CSK and your HIDX, are only available in 6000K, but at pretty good prices. I'm not sure, but I think the expensive Soltek Fuego is 4300K. It appears the Hella/Optilux comes in at 6000K as well. So if a guy really has to scratch to come up with about $250 for two lights, that yellow spray trick is pretty good. Even with the slight light loss, that might be a great (fairly) low budget solution on my bike - along with Philips X-treme Power H4 bulbs in the stock headlights.

I'll certainly keep this in mind. Maybe we'll be able to pick up some reports on durability and longevity, as time goes on.

Re: Making a 6000K a little more yellow?

I have not seen anyone tint a reflector like you have. Honestly, I would think that it wouldn't work out very well due to the heat from the bulb, and loss of reflectivity. You'll have to let us know how it holds up.

In the future, if you want to change your HID bulbs it can be done pretty easy and inexpensive. I am not familiar with your housings, but if they use standard D2 or D1 bulbs, you can get OE Philips/Osram 4100k from Ebay for really cheap $25/ea or so, maybe less. You can also scope out your local body shop, you know.. the one that repairs nicer cars. Talk to the owner and see if he saves the crashed headlights that had OE xenon in them. I used to have a local shop save them for to salvage parts from for retrofits. They were previously shop garbage, so the owner was happy to pass them on to me for $20 each, or bring a load of pizza and soda to feed his workers in trade.

If you have bulbs that are rebased to fit a halogen spec housing, you can get some cheap Chinese stuff (it actually works for the most part) through ddmtuning. They are $20 per PAIR of rebased HID bulbs. One word of caution with DDM.. Since they are Chinese made, the bulbs are not properly rated in terms of color temperature. 4500k, 5000k and 6000k are all roughly the same, approx. 6000k. If you want more yellow, you might want go with 3000k. For how cheap they are, it's hard to beat when you're working on a budget.